UTOPIA by Travis Scott: Review
Travis continues to shine with his production as he delves into more mysterious and electronic sound, but his latest release still lacks substance
Intro
“HYAENA” opens the album with the lines:
The situation we are in at this time
Neither a good one, nor is it so unblessed
The latter bar can act as a preview of what’s to come. Though the album skews to the “not unblessed” side, the patterns of Travis’s strengths and shortcomings continue from his previous records. His production is as compelling and unique as ever, creating some instrumentals that don’t even sound like they should be beats. The project boasts a feature lineup even mainstream pop artists would die for. He branches out more than ever from his trap roots, tapping into the vocals of singers like Beyonce and The Weeknd, but not in a manner that gives way to the corny pop style that’s consumed the styles of Drake and Eminem.
But the greatness and several solid musical stretches of this album are interrupted by rare feature duds from A-list artists, songs that feel more like extended interludes, and the general feeling of emptiness that spawns as a byproduct of listening to lyrics that have no meaning. Travis should be hooking us with the sound and getting us to stay for the contact, but it seems he can only do the former on this album.
Recap and Thoughts
The first half of this album is nearly flawless. It’s where most of Travis’s solo songs are concentrated—these are the songs where he’s most willing to experiment and gift us sounds we’ve never heard in a rap album. These early songs are also filled with decent bars and messaging—something that can’t necessarily be said for later ones.
One of this album’s strengths comes from the fact that it’s a blend of older callbacks and original ideas. “HYAENA,” for example, is a clear callback to the party anthems that dominated the ASTROWORLD project, which seemed to be targeted at songs that would absolutely bang at a festival.
This track is a standard Travis party anthem (the type that causes earthquakes at his performances) and goes incredibly hard to an echoey electronic beat. His flow is especially strong on this song—smoothly rattling off bar after bar that are narcissistic and boastful in classic Travis fashion (but what did you expect?) He maintains the style that popularized him to great effectiveness.
Write a show 'bout myself like I'm Chelsea Handler
Or write a series 'bout my bitches like I'm Kelsey Grammer
Nicknamed the jet Jayhawk 'cause it's outta Kansas
You know it's Spaldin' in my top, I'm in my esperanza
Similarly, we have a Drake collab that checks all the boxes of “SICKO MODE”: Travis and Drake going bar for bar, flexing their accomplishments and putting down their competition, and a majestic beat switch midway through. This Travis verse is easily one of the strongest pure rap segments on the whole LP:
And they scared of the seven (Seven)
After one-three then we turn up eleven (Yeah)
Keep this shit open like 7-Eleven (It's lit)
Me at the house, I got seven in heaven
They think I'm satanic, I keep me a reverend
Lil' shawty a therapist (yeah), poppin' her shit
She inching my way then she started confessing
I know what's at stake, I'm screamin', "Free Jeffery"
Connect collect calls right off of the celly
Gave her the blues, not talkin' 'bout belly
Don't keep it sincere, I go Makaveli
I got the juice, now it's heavy (Juice)
Always on t-time, been ready (T, ah), yeah
Many of these songs that attempt to replicate Travis’s past hits do so very faithfully. However, Travis also shows that he’s not afraid to try out new styles, which leads to both powerful hits and painful misses.
“THANK GOD” is the album’s second track—an incredibly underrated one split into two halves. The first half is dominated by a slower, darker, and more mysterious beat and some soulful vocals. I think the second half is where Travis shines: after an incredible beat switch, we transition into a more uptempo instrumental that’s still just as ominous. He also has some solid lines here, expressing his gratitude for life:
Still no pressure
Thank God, I breathe
'Cause shit I speak is what they need, I tell no lies
I'm still up top, they still can't drop, but what if they not?
“MODERN JAM” is another highlight, which uses an unused section of the production from Kanye’s “I Am A God” (and I believe also interpolates Kanye’s flow?) I don’t recall seeing a track of this type from Travis before—it sounds like semi-chill club-type music and the Teezo feature hits. However, that’s not to say all this experimentation pays off, as we see a clear counterexample in:
I don’t see the point of this song, and I’m not sure why Dave Chappelle is on it either. It’s exceedingly short, and (what seems to be) the chorus takes up most of the track. It also can’t decide what mood it wants to be in: for the first minute or so, it’s one of the darkest Travis pieces ever, yet when it reaches its midsection where Travis sings
Flyin' through the bush, we flyin' through the bush
It inexplicably changes up into a more upbeat tone, then immediately switches back down. The Dave Chappelle monologue feels like an attempt at copying “Pornography” off of the Rodeo intro, and it just seems so out of place. Also, his sound keeps dipping and rising in volume—Travis is an incredible producer, so I have no idea what he was doing here (or why he even included Chappelle in the first place).
In a similar manner to the experimentation, the features on this album are also a mixed bag. This is a very feature-driven album, as 13 of its 19 tracks have one (even though the solo tracks are far stronger). Let’s start with the ones that do work:
I enjoy Beyonce’s vocals on this song—they pair incredibly with the production, which is very house-influenced. She does a combination of rap and vocals that pair so well, especially with Travis coming in and out during her verses. Interestingly enough, Travis fades into the background on this song: he only has two full verses to Beyonce’s (I think) five. For that reason, I struggle to credit this song as the best on UTOPIA since it sounds like it belongs on a Beyonce record instead of Travis’s.
Both SZA and Future absolutely activate on this record’s penultimate track “TELEKINESIS.” I’ll admit that I don’t enjoy many of SZA’s solo projects because I’m not a fan of her production style—but put her over a rap, electro, and psychedelic-influenced beat like this one and she becomes a flawless vocalist. I was honestly doubtful as to whether Future and Travis would pair well together, given that they have two completely different vocal styles (Future’s are very deep, Travis’s are more floaty) but they complement each other effectively here.
Weirdly enough, 21 Savage actually gives a great performance on the album’s final and extremely underrated track “TIL FURTHER NOTICE.” His verses are usually just about straight sex—describing sexual pursuits in great detail, but he admits to regretting such impulses in this verse:
My mama always told me, "Put yourself first"
I don't really fall in love with women, man, 'cause love hurt
I hit a couple broads, I can't lie, I put my dick first
Now you runnin' 'round playin' payback and that shit hurt
James Blake’s chorus gives this song a pretty heavy-hitting emotional appeal that builds off of its trap-like beat. The lyrics don’t do much, as he just repeats:
Where will you go now
Now that you're done with me?
However, his performance is pretty moving.
Following these tracks, there are several features that don’t change the album meaningfully—and the focus on features in this review is necessary, due to the scarcity of solo Travis songs. Plus, Travis was evidently picking his feature artists carefully, due to some notable exclusions off the final album.
“SKITZO” is this album’s longest song and one of my favorites (if you notice one pattern in my reviews, it’s that I really like longer tracks when they’re executed well) with two beat switches and three separate sections. Young Thug appears on the album’s first section for one verse that lasts nearly a minute, whereas the other 5 minutes are all Travis. I’m not sure what the utility of adding Thug was, but it ultimately doesn’t change my evaluation of the track much.
That evaluation’s pretty overwhelmingly positive: Travis has some lyrical highlights in the third section, which has the slowest of the song’s three beats.
I cut some off, I had to better myself
Against the odds, I'd bet on myself
I was at Frank Gibbins before Thanksgiving, thanks to my health
Too many flaws, tryna generate wealth
Man, that's how you go broke and lose bros and lose hope in this shit
I was thinkin' that we both could be rich, I guess it's one-sided
Crazy how they love to talk shit and got no Trident
I'm loyal, bitch, I got Ye over Biden
Then “FE!N” is just your classic chart-topping song that doesn’t say anything. The chorus is repetitive and got old for me after basically two weeks, and Playboi Carti is literally unintelligible through the course of his entire verse. The one redeeming quality of this song is its production—it’s a great beat that turns you up.
Unfortunately, there are some notable duds, and one of them is surprisingly The Weeknd (who appears twice on this album). His first appearance is on “CIRCUS MAXIMUS,” an average track that I’m ultimately indifferent to. His second appearance, though, has some of the most horrendous songwriting on the record.
Following some strong Bad Bunny vocals, Abel comes in and drops this dumpster fire of a verse, which includes such lines as:
You love me, you could tell me you love me
Even if you don't mean it (Mm-mm)
Sex'll make you believe it (Mm-mm)
I love it when she up on me (Mm-mm)
Love when she'll call me, "Papi" (Mm-mm)
Even though she Korean (Mm-mm)
Get her wet like tsunami, 'nami, ooh, yeah (Yeah-yeah, yeah, yeah)
Then on “TOPIA TWINS,” another just-about-average track, you have…this:
It's so hard to hide I'm a dawg, nigga, I make a mistake and show it
Way I shoot my shot at all these hoes, I fuck my shoulder up
Travis, what if they twins and they Siamese, but they wanna fuck us both? (Yeah)
Buy her what she want and suck her toes, I'm tryna make her cum
Told her throw it back and put that pussy on me (Yeah)
The clear highlight of this album, without a doubt, is its production. I can’t fault any of the songs’ production, even when I think they have massive flaws lyrically and in their performance. The best tracks on this record are all driven by their instrumentals:
14-year-olds on TikTok love to praise Travis’s second-half rap verse on this song, but the first half has an incredible sample of this song below:
Another amazing production-driven track on this LP is “I KNOW ?,” where Travis has both a great instrumental and an incredible vocal performance. In terms of lyrics, we see Travis at his most introspective:
I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know
I lied too, way before (Let's go), before
Before I had you right inside my arms
But then again, I could be drunk (It's lit, yeah)
But the biggest setback of this album is its failure to send any sort of message or have any meaningful substance. It’s not cohesive in terms of its themes and feels like an amalgamation of many tracks instead of an actual project. A lot of the verses are empty and don’t reach the lyrical level of his older projects like Rodeo. We still don’t know what UTOPIA even references or means beyond this one snippet at the end of “SIRENS” (a song that also doesn’t say anything lyrically):
I thought we were going to utopia?
What makes you say this isn't utopia?
I mean, I don't know, isn't it supposed to be some perfect destination? This is just your hotel room
Yeah, it looks perfect to me
The italicized text is meant to be some girl Travis is talking to, and the regular text is just Travis. In this part of the song, he just sounds like teenagers in Instagram comment sections trying but failing to be deep.
Summary
UTOPIA’s production sees Travis at the strongest he’s been in several years—bringing us old and new sounds and branching out into new styles of instrumentals that further expand his catalog of hits. The album also comes with an impressive slate of feature artists that work to differing extents, but mostly strengthen the album.
However, there’s a feeling of emptiness once the project concludes. There’s no overarching theme, message, or common element that ties everything together. And although he does experiment on individual songs, he fails to innovate meaningfully on this LP and differentiate it from his other strong albums—disappointing given the five-year wait and the fact that this album could be so much more than what it is.
But Travis largely makes up for his lack of broad stylistic change with small improvements to what came before. He follows the same format and style that made him popular and adds new twists to it. He’s willing to take that old sound and introduce new musical genres into it.
Song-by-Song Breakdown
HYAENA: 7/10
THANK GOD: 8/10
MODERN JAM: 8/10
MY EYES: 8/10
GOD’S COUNTRY: 4/10
SIRENS: 5/10
MELTDOWN: 8/10
FE!N: 5/10
DELRESTO (ECHOES): 9/10
I KNOW ?: 9/10
TOPIA TWINS: 5/10
CIRCUS MAXIMUS: 6/10
PARASAIL: 2/10
SKITZO: 9/10
LOST FOREVER: 7/10
LOOOVE: 6/10
K-POP: 5/10
TELEKINESIS: 8/10
TIL FURTHER NOTICE: 8/10
Best:
SKITZO
DELRESTO (ECHOES)
I KNOW ?
Worst: PARASAIL
Best Lyricism: SKITZO
Best Production: I KNOW ?
Best Performance: MELTDOWN
Best Feature: Beyonce, DELRESTO (ECHOES)
Most Overrated: FE!N
Most Underrated: THANK GOD